How this grassroots activist came to support Marty Walsh

I am tired of the media implying that all of the people of color who are endorsing Marty Walsh are "old school Boston" and that John Connolly is getting the "new" “diverse” Boston. I resent that the voices of lots of grassroots folks, like me, and many others are being discounted. I grew up in Roxbury and I live in Dorchester. I love this city and I know that we have a long way to go until we are One Boston. In the first round I was with John Barros, but when he lost – I had to decided which of the two remaining candidates would best support my hope for Boston.

After the election I talked to colleagues and we decided that in this round we wanted to come together. We were mostly in our 30s and 40s and we work on issues from affordable housing to immigration to youth development. We represented Black, Latino and Asian communities from around the City. We are proud that Boston is a predominently people of color city, but we know that those numbers will mean nothing if different communities of color cannot unify to stand on the issues that are affecting us. Some wanted to just focus on issues and others wanted to make a collective endorsement. We created a process to do both.

First we looked at the previous questionnaires that they had submitted to the NAACP, Oiste! and Right to the City. Those were great but didn’t give enough detail. So we asked both of them to submit their plans for the 1st 100 days, 1 year and 4 years of their administration. We asked for concrete measurable outcomes by which we could evaluate them. We called a meeting to look at those plans and decide which was stronger.

In the end Marty Walsh’s plan scored higher because he got more specific. They only had 4 days to turn these around, so we didn’t expect them to be perfect, but we wanted to see them make some concrete commitments. We questioned whether Walsh could complete all of the things he talked about, but we thought that was better than Connolly who talked in broad terms about his vision rather than saying what he would specifically get done. I suspect the difference was because Connolly’s piece seemed to be compiled by cutting and pasting things from previous writings. I later heard that Marty reached out to leaders of color like John Barros and Linda Dorcena-Forry to get their perspective. Connolly talked a lot about reaching out in his submission, but Marty did it to create his submission and it made a difference in the quality of his answers.

After we scored their plans, we looked at their track record. We had tried to create a list of their voting record in advance of the meeting, but getting info on City Council votes was challenging. So we decided to go with the wisdom in the room. I knew that there would be people who had worked with both candidates on a number of different issues. So we posted up two pieces of butcher paper for each candidate. One sheet was for posting positive positions and good working experiences and the other sheet was for negative positions or negative working experiences.

Each leader focused on the issues that mattered to them the most so we had a diversity of things on the papers. A picture was worth a thousand words. Folks had a series of concerns with Connolly’s stance on issues and the way that he worked with people – in particular they were concerned about the way he had handled education issues and particularly the school assignment process. On the flip side people pointed to positive stances Walsh took on issues like CORI, immigration and recovery services. The one key concern with Walsh was whether he would be too defferintial to the unions.

Based on his plan and record people were leaning Walsh but could not move forward without hearing from him directly. So the group met with Marty and challenged him around our union concerns. He apologized for the impact that racism in the unions has had on communities of color. He also talked about what he has done in the past two years (that is how long he has been leading the building trades) to try to shift the culture in the unions and make more space for women and people of color. He went on to talk about housing affordability and other issues that were important to him. By the end of the conversation our group felt like he understood where we were coming from and that he was willing to work with us not just to get elected but to continue the dialogue after he got into office.

So if you want the process in a nutshell – Walsh put time into the details on his questionnaire and Connolly only shared a broad vision, which is not what we asked for. When we looked at their records, folks seemed to agree that Connolly says the right things but felt that he didn’t always take a stand in the end. Marty is less eloquent, but he has been willing to take a stand on the key issues.

We backed Marty based on his platform and his record and his willingness to work with us. I need to be clear – I am not hating on anyone who is supporting Connolly – if the group had collectively chosen him then that is who I would have been backing. But I am proud to have been part of a process where people came together and made a choice collectively based not on what was good for us individually, but what we thought would be best for our collective communities.

If I had my choice of who I really want to lead our city I would choose Jesus Christ. Ghandi would be a great backup and I would love to see Cesar Chavez or Michelle Obama run our city. But since none of them are on the ballot, I have to choose the person who I think has the best chance of moving this city forward. I don’t care about who has the slicker ads who the more polished accent, I have already learned that those things mean little.

I AM NEW BOSTON - AND I AM SUPPORTING MARTY WALSH.